The Blessing: Giving the Gift of Unconditional Love and Acceptance

The best-selling classic that helps children thrive today and experience a special future tomorrow. Now revised, updated, and enhanced for a new generation! Children of every age long for the gift of “the blessing” - the unconditional love and approval that come from a healthy relationship with their parents.

I Promise: How 5 Commitments Determine the Destiny of Your Marriage

America's foremost marriage expert has come to the remarkable conclusion that great marriages are not built on behavioral skills. Rather, they are built on a foundation of trust. If your spouse does not feel safe enough to open up his or her heart without fear of being judged, criticized, or rejected, nothing you do, such as learning to control your emotions, learning your partner's love language, or even becoming an expert in the bedroom, will matter.

From Anger to Intimacy

Did you know that spiritual, emotional, physical and relational exhaustion lead to anger? And unresolved anger leads to sin. All couples deal with anger and how they respond (stuff it, spew it or study it), can make all the difference in their relationship and in their lives. In From Anger to Intimacy, Gary Smalley and Ted Cunningham explore this often maligned and God-given emotion that unless dealt with can strip us of everything we love.

For Better or for Best: A Valuable Guide to Knowing, Understanding, and Loving your Husband

In this newly revised edition of the classic best seller For Better or for Best, Gary Smalley speaks to women and explains what motivates men and how wives can use their natural qualities and abilities to build a better marriage. Using case histories and biblical illustrations, as well as stories from his own marriage, Smalley offers empathy, humor, and wisdom to women who wish to more fully understand their husbands and love them better.

If Only He Knew: A Valuable Guide to Knowing, Understanding, and Loving Your Wife

With over 800,000 copies in print, If Only He Knew by best-selling author Gary Smalley has long been esteemed as one of the premier books on marriage for men. Smalley helps men understand their wives and meet their needs in order to establish a loving, thriving relationship that will last a lifetime. Newly revised and expanded to reflect up-to-date research and the current cultural landscape for today's modern audience, this book is the perfect guide for husbands who want to love their wives and strengthen their marriages in a way like never before.

Too Busy Not to Pray: Slowing Down to Be With God

Bill Hybels's accessible introduction to prayer has already helped over 400,000 readers develop a rich and regular prayer life in the midst of life's business. Now, in this revised and expanded 10th anniversary edition, he includes new insights from his years of ministry and his own spiritual journey. He shows how to slow down to pray, listen to God, respond to what we hear, practice the presence of God and overcome prayer barriers.

Choose Love: The Three Simple Choices That Will Alter the Course of Your Life

Stormie Omartian’s bestselling books on the power of prayer have touched millions of lives. Recent books have taken a closer look at the leading of the Holy Spirit and the call to be a prayer warrior for God. Now Stormie takes a fresh look at another powerful aspect of knowing our Creator…His amazing and great love for us. We reflect God most clearly when we are motivated by the power of love in all we say and do. But first we have to understand the depth of God's love for us and receive it.

Language of Sex: Experiencing the Beauty of Sexual Intimacy

There is a secret formula for the best sex of your life, but you won't find the recipe in the pages of a checkout-line magazine. Popular relationship expert Dr. Gary Smalley, best-selling author of The Language of Love and The Blessing, finally tackles the topic that's on everybody's mind: sex. With his pastor and good friend, Ted Cunningham, Smalley nudges past our hang-ups and sacred cows to answer the question, How can I have the best sex of my life? The answer?

The DNA of Relationships

We are designed for relationships, yet they often bring us pain. In this paradigm-shifting book, Gary Smalley unravels the DNA of relationships: we are made for three great relationships, with God, others, and ourselves, and all relationships involve choice. Gary exposes a destructive relationship dance that characterizes nearly every relationship conflict, and he offers five new dance steps that will revolutionize relationships.

Joy That Lasts

What would you give to have joy in your marriage? Not just happiness, but enduring, deep-rooted joy that weathers every storm? It's yours to have - provided you go to the right source. Here's a hint: It's not your spouse. Like virtually every husband and wife, each of you entered your marriage with expectations of how your mate would meet your needs. Maybe you've discovered that the reality is a little different. Neither of you is capable of recharging the other person's joy battery. Only one power source is strong enough to provide an unfailing flow of the things you're really looking for - and that's God.

Sacred Marriage: What If God Designed Marriage to Make Us Holy More Than to Make Us Happy?

What if God's primary intent for your marriage isn't to make you happy...but holy? And what if your relationship isn't as much about you and your spouse as it is about you and God? Sacred Marriage invites you to view your marriage in a new and different light - as a spiritual discipline, a means whereby you can come to know God more fully and intimately.

Love and Respect in the Family: The Transforming Power of Love and Respect Between Parent and Child

Children need love. Parents need respect. It is as simple and complex as that! When frustrated with an unresponsive child, a parent doesn't declare, "You don't love me." Instead the parent asserts, "You are being disrespectful right now." A parent needs to feel respected, especially during conflicts. When upset a child does not whine, "You don't respect me." Instead, a child pouts, "You don't love me." A child needs to feel loved, especially during disputes.

Point Man: How a Man Can Lead His Family

This best-selling classic encourages and equips Christian men to lead their families successfully through hazards and ambushes like divorce, promiscuity, suicide, and drug addiction. Men will find practical insight on topics such as a father's influence, maintaining purity, and husband-and-wife teamwork. In this war, renowned men's author Steve Farrar emphasizes, Jesus Christ is looking for men who will not die, but live for their families.

Beginning with self-examination and setting realistic expectations, the authors explore how couples can nurture and master healthy communication, build trust and enhance the romance in their marriage. As in their other best-selling literary endeavors, Cloud & Townsend take it a step further as they help couples solve destructive conflicts and offer strategies for avoiding temptation that can destroy God's plan for marriage.

A Lifelong Love: What If Marriage Is About More Than Just Staying Together?

Gary Thomas believes couples often settle for too little when it comes to marriage. We fail to understand how deeply God cares about our spouse. We diminish our need to not only understand what biblical love really is, but also to become a people who excel at it. We let ourselves drift apart instead of making the daily choices to grow closer together. Whether your marriage needs a complete makeover, a touch up, or just a new purpose, A Lifelong Love promises to set your relationship on an entirely new dimension.

Living in Christ's Presence: Final Words on Heaven and the Kingdom of God

Dallas Willard and John Ortberg explore what it means to live well now in light of God's kingdom. They reflect on the power of the Trinity in our lives, the meaning of knowledge, the importance of spiritual disciplines and much more. Dallas Willard offers poignant thoughts about what it will be like to transition into the very presence of Christ in heaven. This audiobook is adapted from the talks given at the February 2013 Dallas Willard Center "Knowing Christ Today" conference in Santa Barbara, California.

Disciplines of a Godly Man

Using engaging illustrations, scriptural wisdom, practical suggestions and study questions, Kent Hughes offers a frank biblical discussion on major areas of Christian manhood: family, godliness, leadership, ministry and more. This newly revised edition is for every man who wants to know what it means to be a Christian in today's world.

Love Must Be Tough: New Hope for Families in Crisis

Boasting more than one million copies of his works sold, conservative radio personality Dr. James C. Dobson squarely addresses the problem of troubled marriages. He targets infidelity, alcoholism, spousal abuse, and emotional distance as the primary causes of divorce. Dobson also chooses to denounce homosexuality as an abomination. With his groundbreaking theory of "loving toughness", he offers a path toward solving marital problems, building family values, and rekindling lost romance.

Love Does: Discover a Secretly Incredible Life in an Ordinary World

Love Does shares powerful stories coupled with eye-opening truths and empowers anyone who longs for a better world and a richer faith. You don’t need another Christian message or a self-help book. You need to have your paradigms about the world shifted into truth. That’s exactly what you get in Love Does. Have you ever noticed that the real change in your life - the growth that sticks and becomes a part of you - never happens with a program or the sheer grit of your best efforts?

The Three Big Questions for the Frantic Family: A Leadership Fable

As a husband and the father of four young boys, Lencioni realized the discrepancy between the time and energy his clients put into running their organizations and the reactive way most people run their personal lives. Having experienced the stress of a frantic family firsthand, he and his wife began applying some of the tools he uses with Fortune 500 companies at home, and with surprising results.

How to Be a Best Friend Forever: Making and Keeping Lifetime Relationships

Our world has diluted the meaning of friendship, but the reality is, there’s nothing like the sustaining strength of true-blue, forever friends. Still, many people are convinced that they’ll never find such lifelong connections—or that they don’t need them. In this encouraging audio book, best-selling author and psychologist John Townsend delivers hope and help for making these relationships a reality—and for making them even better if you’ve already got a “bestie.”

Becoming More Than a Good Bible Study Girl: Living the Faith after Bible Class Is Over

Are you tired of just going through the motions of the Christian life? Do you feel a tug at your heart to live completely for God - but don't know what the next step is? Lysa TerKeurst invites you to uncover the spiritually exciting life you long for. Fulfillment is closer than you ever thought possible.

Lead Me, Holy Spirit: Longing to Hear the Voice of God

Readers can walk in the power and presence of the Holy Spirit in every area of life. With a sure hand, Stormie helps readers to see that the Holy Spirit wants those who know Him to hear His gentle leading when He speaks to their heart, soul, and spirit. He wants to help believers enter into the relationship with God they yearn for, the wholeness and freedom God has for them, and the fulfillment of God's promises to them. He wants to lead them.

Publisher's Summary

The best-selling classic that helps children thrive today and experience a special future tomorrow. Now revised, updated, and enhanced for a new generation!

Children of every age long for the gift of “the blessing” - the unconditional love and approval that come from a healthy relationship with their parents. This life-changing gift, essential for instilling a deep sense of self-worth and unshakable emotional well-being, contains five essential elements:

Meaningful touch

A spoken message

Attaching high value

Picturing a special future

An active commitment

Offering solid, practical advice and a fresh perspective on making this gift a bigger part of our families, The Blessing powerfully communicates these biblically based elements as necessary to prepare children for positive future relationships, including their relationship with a loving God. But what if we’ve missed out on the blessing in our own lives? This audio book gives hope for “reversing the curse” and helps listeners find blessing in situations of divorce, death, desertion, adoption, and blended families. New to this updated edition are practical ideas, questions, exercises, and links for online resources - plus practical advice for planning a blessing event for a child, preparing a keepsake blessing, and living out the blessing every day of our lives.

Visit www.TheBlessing.com for more information and an opportunity to join The Blessing Challenge, one million people choosing to change the life of one child - their child!

Excellent message of hope and vital information for every parent and child. i love the knowledge that I can bless my child, strengthen them and encourage them. i appreciate the practical instruction in how to do it. This is an important message that needs to be learned, shared, and carried out. I withheld one star because of the decision theology included in the book: making the power and grace of God dependant on a work of a human being, something that is neither taught nor demonstrated anywhere in the Bible. The message of the blessing, however, is phenomenal and I highly recommend the book.

This book was an okay read, but I felt like I could have gotten the same information out of a short article. The author used lots of storytelling and reciting of scripture to enforce the elements of the blessing, that to me didn't add much. I was hoping to learn something from the book, but honestly don't feel like I took anything new away from it.

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